possible autoconf bug for SCO Openserver

[Roger Cornelius]

I reported this problem to address@hidden since bison is the package
I was building, but now that I think about it, this might be a autoconf
problem.  Apologies if this is the wrong list.  I'm unfamiliar with
autoconf's workings and not a member of any of its mailing lists.

>From rac Sun Aug 25 11:21:22 2002
From: address@hidden (Roger Cornelius)
To: address@hidden
Subject: bison 1.35 build fails on SCO Openserver
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 11:21:22 -0400 (EDT)

On SCO Openserver 5.0.6, configure fails during the config.status step
when building bison 1.35.  Here's an edited typescript with the error
message:


Script started on Sun Aug 25 10:46:35 2002
$ ./configure prefix=/u/gnu

[ all the "Checking..." messages deleted ]

configure: creating ./config.status
mkdir: cannot make directory: tests: File exists (error 17)
config.status: error: cannot create directory "tests"
$

script done on Sun Aug 25 10:47:14 2002


The problem is caused by the variable $as_mkdir_p not being exported for
use by config.status.  Unlike what I think is the linux behavour, mkdir
-p on an existing directory fails on Openserver.  In this circumstance,
$as_mkdir_p is (correctly) set to "false" in the first few lines of
configure.  But $as_mkdir_p is not exported or otherwise made available
for use by config.status, and the above failure occurs.  On systems
where mkdir -p on an existing directory does not fail (linux?), I don't
believe this would be an issue.

One fix would be to export the $as_mkdir_p variable in configure.
Another would be to write the assignment to config.status when it is
created.  Here is a brief patch to configure for the former:


*** configure.old       Mon Mar 25 04:37:52 2002
--- configure   Sun Aug 25 11:18:50 2002
***************
*** 14,19 ****
--- 14,20 ----
    as_expr=false
  fi
  
+ export as_mkdir_p
  if mkdir -p . 2>/dev/null; then
    as_mkdir_p=:
  else